Customers of cable TV and/or other video services often pay a premium to be entitled to watch premium channels such as premium movie, sports or news channels. Service subscriptions are often for services provided to a specific customer location, sometimes referred to as a customer premise which is often a home or business location corresponding to a service subscriber.
Individuals corresponding to a particular customer premise may customize the program guide menus, parental control features, etc., so that the features are customized to suit their own tastes and/or to take into consideration the age of individual member's of a household.
In addition to creating customized program guides and/or setting individual service options including, e.g., customized guide display options, in some systems, individuals corresponding to a household, e.g., customer premise, may create personal libraries of recordings. While some recordings may be available and accessible to all members of a household, access to personal recordings and/or specific content recorded by an individual may be intentionally restricted in terms of access to that individual.
Currently in many cable systems if an individual starts a communications session at one set top box and moves to another location, the user must initiate a new video delivery session and find the location at which to begin watching a program again if they wish to see the end of a video or other program that they were watching. Thus, in addition to the various above discussed features that individuals may have come to expect at least while at home where they subscribe to a service, individuals may also desire the ability to initiate a video and/or content delivery session and continue it at another location, e.g., via a different set top box.
While a user may customize his/her home services at one set top box, it would be nice if there was an easy way for the user's service customization information to be available wherever the user traveled, e.g., at another set top box, so that it was readily available for use by set top boxes wherever the user might move whether the movement is within a house or to another site entirely, e.g., at a different location, e.g., premise, corresponding to another customer.
From the above discussion it should be appreciated that while cable TV and other video service providers have been able to provide individuals a high degree of service customization at an individual set top box used by a service subscriber, there remains a need to increase the portability of user information and/or the customization of features and services which can be supplied to an individual as the user moves within a house or travels from one customer premise, e.g., home, to another.